The Adventures of a Scrawny Musician and a Compulsive Liar

4. A Typical Friday Night

It’s 9:02 PM on a Friday night and I’m sitting on the couch watching my sister kick ass against some poor kid from Arizona.

            “What now!” Beth screams into the headset as she knifed a member of the opposing team for the fifty-fourth time. I’m pretty sure I hear the doorbell ring but the sound’s masked by my sister’s screams of, “Suck on that!” as she unlocks another weapon for her high score kill streak.

            “Um, Laurence?” I turn around and see Mom’s brow furrowed in confusion. “There’s a girl… waiting on our porch… asking for you…”

            Beth freezes. And leaves her group.

            She never leaves her group during a mission.

            Ever.

            She turns and stares at Mom with disbelief lacing her light golden-brown eyes.

            “Are you saying there’s a real live girl waiting on our porch asking for him?”

            I look at Beth, then Mom. After a rather lengthy silence, I speak, “Well, you don’t have to act so surprised.” But in all honesty, I was quite shocked too. Girls never really spoke to me besides the occasional “hello” while passing each other in the halls. And even then, I only manage a half-hearted shake of the palm for a wave in response. With both of their gazes on me, Mom’s worried, Beth’s incredulous, I make my way to the front door. The face that I see there shocks me.

            “H-hi, Natalie… What’s up?” I stammer.

            Flushed and grinning as always, she opens her mouth as if to speak, then closes it back while looking over my shoulder with curious eyes. Following her gaze, I immediately see two blond heads listening near the edge of the doorway, peeking in. Seeing my gaze, they immediately avert their eyes to different sections of the wallpaper. Facing Natalie again, she asks a question with her eyes. I shake my head, and gesture for her to say whatever she was going to say before.

            “It’s Friday and I thought we’d go hang out for a bit, get to know each other. Oh, you aren’t busy are you? Because I completely understand if you do seeing as it’s the weekend and all,” Natalie adds on at the end. I hear Beth snort from the living room and quickly disguise it as an incredibly fake-sounding cough when I turn my head and narrow my eyes at her.

            “Yeah, I’m free…” Beth snort-coughs again. I send her a quick death-glare. She smiles sweetly.

            “Ooh, great! I know just the place!” And just like that, Natalie’s expression switches from mild worry to delight in a second. She grabs the arm of my hobo-sweatshirt (God, I wish I wore a jacket without food stains) and drags me outside.

            “Have fun, honey!” Mom calls out from behind me. My face heats up. Fortunately, it was dark outside and we were out of the street-lamps’ yellow glow. Natalie drags me to her side and urges me to continue walking.

            “I was thinking we’d swing by my house and pick up my car before we go,” she announced, skipping happily while I shuffled along. The night chill seeped through the thin layer of my hobo-sweatshirt and enveloped my skin in an icy cold. My arms were crossed and I was doing a little jumpy dance to conserve body heat. Looking over at the girl beside me, I notice that she wore nothing more than one of those little sweaters that girls wear that never look warm enough to stand up against a mere breeze, let alone the freezing cold of the night air. I couldn’t help but feel that I should give her my sweatshirt, dirty as it was, out of politeness. I mean, isn’t that what guys did? Give their jackets to the girls to prove that chivalry wasn’t dead?